Introduction: Age, gender and social trajectories: the uneven emancipation of women in mediterranean societies

At the start of the third millennium, the path towards gender equality more uncertain than ever. Changes in behaviours in the areas of private and public life reveal the permanence of a structural principle of masculine domination. While the behaviours and trajectories of men and women have relatively converged in recent years, they have not fundamentally challenged the social division of gender roles. To understand this evolution in gender relations, one has to examine the content and effects of the changes that have occurred, and assess their scope. The reproduction of social gender relations is indeed contrasted and contradictory. It requires one to untangle the aspects tending to establish more equitable gender relations from those tending to reproduce current gender inequalities. In reality, and as a hypothesis, one can speak of a twofold uncertainty to try to characterize the evolution of gender relations: on the one hand, democratic advances (in schooling, in the labour market, etc.) coexist with conservative institutions and mentalities, and on the other hand, the changes achieved, which cannot be reduced to a simple democratisation of social gender relations, can themselves generate contradictory effects. This is true, for example, of the public policies (especially regarding the family) of the nation states, which are torn between an official egalitarian logic of reduction of gender inequalities and a differentialist (or positive-discrimination) logic that is more discreet and more concerned to preserve social gender identities to some degree. It is instructive to analyse socio-demographic behaviours (mainly the intensity of fertility and its calendar), because it can be a way of examining this uncertain process of democratisation of social gender relations. In contrast to those of men, the socio-occupational trajectories of women seem more dependent on their demographic calendars. This link has a priori a twofold meaning: on the one hand, women’s place in the family is a brake on their socio-occupational emancipation, embodied in the idea of work-life balance; on the other hand, the construction of women’s careers seems to require a move away from the traditionally assigned roles: the growing number of women who do not marry, and the later age of maternity are from this standpoint manifestations of ‘choices’ that women make for the sake of their occupational integration. This contradiction or marked competition between private and public life seems to constitute a specifically female way of articulating the different components of individual trajectories.